


the air takes a flame from anything

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [209]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Coal-mining, Epistolary, Gen, Gothmog is not as much a fool, Morgoth is a fool, New Villain Alert, Plotting, title loosely taken from a Jean Toomer poem, we knew this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23472220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Her enemies respected her.
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [209]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	the air takes a flame from anything

**Author's Note:**

> warning for a (fairly archaic) cultural slur  
> and unfounded slut-shaming, which you've all seen in these pages before

_November 15, 1852_

_To the inestimable A.M., warmest greetings:_

_I know your patience, and admire its infinitesimal fuse. I write boldly, then._

_First, I must acknowledge a direct violation of our agreement, confident that, when you are aware of the circumstances it has elevated for both of us, and the pleasing prospects it has naturally introduced, you shall not even feel the need to issue forgiveness._

_Although our mutual operation—remaining overseen by more than a dozen of your men, and only ten of mine, as you well know—continues to prosper, it has lately occurred to me that the recent lull in opposition from our thug-like foes to the south of here may soon resurge._

_Accordingly, I have invested a judicious allotment of manpower and resources into a smaller smithy, directly beneath my eye. Primarily, I have used it to test efficiency for the various shapes we make of iron. But, as my interests tend keenly to metallurgy and weaponry—and it seeming to me apparent that you, knowledgeable of fuel and forge, yes, but not of science, would have little interest in such a venture—I have done more than mere shape-casting._

_Now I present you the prospect referenced supra; a thing fully-formed. When we first struck up our arrangement ten years ago (My, a thing worth less than the penny-paper we signed our names to!), I told you of my upstart enemy._

_Feanorian is dead. This, you know, from my earlier letters. But now I can assure you that his works did not die with him. Send your Ancalagon messenger! Place an order, if you will, for guns that can hold enough bullets in their chambers to make of ten men a veritable army._

_The railroad, burning your coal, devouring my capital, must succeed._

_Though my eastern reinforcements will, I am sure, continue to stream in as needed, we cannot wait for such support._

_Trusting to your enthusiastic agreement,_

_M.B._

“Twas not him that killed Feanorian, my pet,” said the lady to the caged bird. “If it had been, he’d have come straight out and said so.”

She had read the letter aloud, as was her wont, laughing heartily at the points of prose that seemed to her most foolish.

Anne McCalagon was a massive woman, dressed in black from head to foot. She had been a coal-miner’s daughter, but no one other than herself was yet living who had known her hard father or her weak mother.

The earrings that hung to her shoulders were cut of jet; the ring on her finger had an onyx like a robin’s egg. She smoked like a choked chimney. When she was young, she could shoot a man quicker than the blink of an eye; now she had lackeys to do it for her.

Her enemies respected her.

She was more likely to hate those who considered themselves her friends. But for her opulent jewelry, her nervous canary-bird, and her tobacco, she had no affections.

Women of her stock, in those days, ran brothels. Instead, she oversaw the largest coal mine in Northern California territory. She had a face like a rock wall, thin steel between the whalebones of her corset, and a brogue you could cut with a knife.

“Come in!” she bellowed, when footsteps shuffled outside the door. San Francisco was a smoke-choked town, golden only in its folly. She kept a desk made of mahogany and a dinner-table laden with the finest delicacies money could buy.

Connections had brought her wealth, as well as coal, but it was the desk she valued most. She’d seen a skull or two broken against the edge; the wood was dark enough that it hadn’t stained.

The scuttling servant who entered brought no card. He said her caller did not have one.

“What sort of man is he?”

The description was to her satisfaction. She’d killed her own father with a brick, but she liked to be reminded of him at times.

(She’d killed her husband with a spot of arsenic, when she was sixteen. His money was all the reminder of _him_ she needed.)

Gothmog the overseer stank of sweat, drink, and pipe-smoke. She offered him a cigar; he cut the end with a buck knife and chewed it without lighting it.

“Ye’ve seen your ghost, eh? The _dagos_ think that mountain’s hainted.”

She hated the Spaniards a good deal, for a woman who’d made her peace with them since nigh on a decade ago.

“Bauglir lied to you yet?”

She scratches a black-rimed thumbnail against the crease of his old letter. “He’s not written. He’s sent you.”

“He didn’t send me.” Gothmog had his hat on his knee. His shale-dark hair was cropped almost to his massive skull. “I came myself. We’ve had dealings before.”

“Aye, it was you who brought the diamond,” she said, grinning. The canary chirped, shrill and unrelenting. “ _Ach_ , and I’ll wring your neck one day, you blackguard!” She rejoined, “The diamond isn’t the one he cares for.”

“Nor one he knows about.” Gothmog’s answer was the right one. He knew, as she did, that Diablo was thick with coalbeds. Bauglir was as innocent as a babe, insofar as he was sitting on an empire of riches—even if he was innocent of nothing else.

She lit up her pipe. “What’s amiss with the magpie?”

Gothmog snorted. “You ever seen a man ruined by his own whore?”

“Many a time.”

“He took a pretty Irish redhead for himself. Now his Feanorian smithy’s blown to bits, his outpost with it, half his men dead—from what I heard.”

“And a woman did that?”

“I didn’t say it was a woman.” Gothmog’s smile was wolfish. “Feanorian’s eldest. You know he had sons?”

“I know an Irishman is as useless as other men, perhaps more so, for they do be loving the drink. So this son of his, he has his father’s talent?”

“He’s got a woman’s guile, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Bauglir’s a knock-kneed fool.” She handed over the letter, and let him read his fill. He cast it aside in disgust.

Just as she thought then. Anne McCalagon was a hand at dice, at cards, and reading men’s hate. She said,

“Was it you who killed him?”

“Who?”

She liked knowing that even the clever ones were fools.

“Feanorian.”

He clapped his hat back on his head. “It was me.”

“Verra good,” she said. “You be a man to mind your business, and I’ll take it.”

“It’ll cost you.”

“Now you sound like the panners.” She shook her head. “I’ll pay double what Bauglir’s been laying down. But don’t tell him so, lad. We’ll be needing him again.”

He looked doubtful, but he did not protest.

_December 5, 1852_

_My Honoured Colleague:_

_I would hear more about this smithy. You can have my enthusiastic agreement, if all is as going well as you assure._

_A.M._

The letter, sent, had been written on penny-paper.

**Author's Note:**

> There's some interesting Mt. Diablo/coal-mining history that...may be relevant later. :)


End file.
